


Rare

by ivory_leigh



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Gen, idk what this is guys, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:17:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivory_leigh/pseuds/ivory_leigh
Summary: Death tells Chirrut that the battle on Scarif will be his last one, but Baze refuses to let him head out into the afterlife alone. It's not so strange, really, to find someone willing to change the sands of time. After all, what would humans be without love?





	Rare

Chirrut is meditating, when it comes.

He recognizes it as something he’s felt before, something that’s brushed against his shoulder in the markeplace: a shimmer that moves across him like a shadow in midday. It’s slow and dark and it comes to rest before him, not the muddy waves of a creature about to kill but the unknown depth of a creature about to die.

“Well,” Chirrut thinks. “I suppose I can’t complain.”

INDEED, a voice says inside his head, and the shadow shifts, moves closer. NOT MANY HAVE HAD A LIFE LIKE YOURS.

“It’s tomorrow, then? The last—day?”

YES.

Chirrut takes a deep, steadying breath and holds it, folds his hands together the way they’d taught him when he was young. It’s been a long life, a good life. He can’t complain, even though his chest aches with the thought of dying, of leaving everything he’s ever known behind.

DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, Death says. JUST THINK OF IT AS GETTING A RUNNING START.

The attack party launches early the next morning and Chirrut pretends that nothing is wrong, pretends he doesn’t know he’s marching off to meet his doom. He eats his rations. He meditates. He ignores the darkness that sits on his shoulders like a shroud.

The death light lingers around everyone—Jyn and Cassian and the pilots that are flying with them—but not Baze. Chirrut thinks about that, holds Baze’s hand in the cargo bay just to feel the life flowing through him. Not Baze. He’ll go on to live a good, long life, maybe marry, maybe have children and a family and if he’s a little lonely well, then, at least he’s still alive.

Chirrut doesn’t let himself wonder what might’ve happened if he’d had just a little bit longer. He doesn’t let himself wonder if maybe the afterlife will be lonely without Baze by his side.

He knows when the moment has come, when the shadow gets so heavy on his shoulders he almost staggers under its weight. He hears the crackling voices over the radio, senses the switch some hundred feet away, and he readies himself for the end of it. He puts his staff in both hands, begins the mantra that has guided so much of his life for the very last time: “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”

He hears Baze spluttering behind him, frantic, frightened. “Chirrut, come back!”

The blaster bolts splinter off around him, sending showers of metal and sparks and he keeps going, thinking that at least he leaves the best man he’s ever known alive. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and—

He gets his hands around the switch before the explosion takes him.

It’s all very dramatic, Death thinks, watching. Beautiful, in a way. Baze rushes out onto the battlefield to cradle Chirrut’s body in his arms, hugs him, lets long, white fingers brush against his cheeks. “Chirrut. Chirrut, don’t go. I’m here, it’s okay, please, please don’t go—”

“Look for the Force,” Chirrut says, quietly, blue eyes beginning to close. “Look for the Force and you will always find me.”

The world gets a little darker. The hourglass runs out.

That should have been the end of it, Death thinks. Baze should have taken the body or left it to the Scarif sands, should have found a ship and escaped, alone, before the planet met its untimely end. But he doesn’t. Instead he gets up, blaster cannon in his hands and he starts to shoot, taking out troopers and droids in the smoke-red light. "The Force is with me and I'm one with the Force. The Force is with me and—" He takes a bolt to the leg and staggers, get up, cocks his cannon again. He fires until another explosion brings him to his knees and then he turns, keeps Chirrut in his line of sight until his eyes shut for the last time.

Death pulls the hourglass out of his robes with a little _hmm_ , the world around them gone grey and cloudy, illuminated only by the light of forgotten fires, burning. How unusual, to find a mortal willing to change the flow of the sands of time. How— _rare_.

WELL, he says, to no one in particular. MAYBE IT’S FOR THE BEST.

The Universe always did love a good love story, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on @helookslikeafriend's Tumblr post and @vrabia's lovely tags!


End file.
